Silvio Canto Jr., who does the innovative and informative Canto Talk BlogTalkRadio.com show — and is one of the pioneers in the new mode of podcast-based talk radio that I think is the wave of the future.

Could simply requiring higher down payments on home loans be a compromise reform of Proposition 13?

The Democratic Party supermajority in the state legislature is presently pushing for reforms of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that limits property tax increases to 2 percent per year until a property resells.

Some of the legislature’s proposed reforms include eliminating Prop. 13 for commercial properties and lowering the voter threshold for school parcel taxes to 55 percent from the current two-thirds.

But there may be a better way.

The culprit involved in state budget deficits is not Prop. 13. It is low down-payment requirements and interest rates on home purchases combined with the effects of slow-growth management and environmental laws. Growth-management laws cause the excessive housing booms and busts that throw state and school budgets out of balance, as well as causing upside-down home values.

That Proposition 13 is being target by the Democratic Supermajority should be especially concerning to Californians. It is about the only taxpayer friendly legislation passed in the past 50 years, and makes living in the state quasi-affordable. Any “reform” will tsunami-like fiscal repercussions.

The tests were carried out in waters around New Caledonia and Auckland during the Second World War and showed that the weapon was feasible and a series of 10 large offshore blasts could potentially create a 33-foot tsunami capable of inundating a small city.

The top secret operation, code-named “Project Seal”, tested the doomsday device as a possible rival to the nuclear bomb. About 3,700 bombs were exploded during the tests, first in New Caledonia and later at Whangaparaoa Peninsula, near Auckland.

The plans came to light during research by a New Zealand author and film-maker, Ray Waru, who examined military files buried in the national archives.

“Presumably if the atomic bomb had not worked as well as it did, we might have been tsunami-ing people,” said Mr Waru.

“It was absolutely astonishing. First that anyone would come up with the idea of developing a weapon of mass destruction based on a tsunami … and also that New Zealand seems to have successfully developed it to the degree that it might have worked.” The project was launched in June 1944 after a US naval officer, E A Gibson, noticed that blasting operations to clear coral reefs around Pacific islands sometimes produced a large wave, raising the possibility of creating a “tsunami bomb”.